Most of the time, with VST3 guitars drums, even synths, you need to double or triple the sources to get a real musical feel. Instead of duplicating the original track, and then assign another instrument - which is difficult to manage if you have to change notes afterwards, we could be able to have one single set of MIDI notes triggering several instruments in parallel. I can do that in Blue Cat’s Patchwork, but it would be even more practical if you could do it inside Nuendo, on the fly…
Create shared copies. This way the edits to one part will be inflicted on all its “siblings”.
Can be done by loading up to 5 instruments as rack instruments and then create a MIDI track. Route to the first instrument and use the MIDI Sends to the other four.
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Hi, Johnny
Many thanks. Your shared copies suggestion works perfectly! The second is a bit heavy, because I never used Rack Instruments before - did not understand the point when the feature came out -, so now I would need to read on that, and some practice, I guess.
I both cases, though, it is still not exactly what I need, because the outputs of each instrument stay separated. So when I render to audio, I need to create groups for each if I don’t want to end up with 200 audio tracks in the mix. Groups are easy, I know, but in long, complex sessions, any further complication is a potential source of errors, - and momentum killer -
Best,
¥ ∆ ¥
Dominique Bassal
There are several others customers that would like to see layered or stacked instruments in Nuendo/Cubase’s track list. It would make certain things easier.
I try to explain in a short and simple form as possible.
Let’s start by looking at an Instrument track. Under the hood it consists of three items:
- a midi track
- a connection to an instrument plugin
- and one or more audio channels that are supplied by the instrument plugin
The referrenced instrument plugin (point 2) can be found in the window that is on the F11 key by default or in the VSTi tab in the right zone.
The MIDI on an Instrument track is automatically routed to the associated instrument plugin. The audio output of the plugin is automatically routed to the audio channel(s) of the Instrument track.
Now - a Rack instrument
You can load a Rack Instrument into the same window (F11 or right zone → VSTi) as where you can find Track Instruments, just in the lower portion of it.
Nuendo will then ask you if a MIDI track should be created for this instrument. If you click Yes you will have done the orange and blue part of the above drawing already.
The green part, the audio channel(s) get created by Nuendo on seperate track in a (new) folder called VST. This is where you would have to load audio effects onto and also write any audio automation to.
Basically an Instrument track is a consolidation of the older principle of having to load a plugin into the rack, create a MIDI track for it and have all the audio stuff seperated from the MIDI.
BUT - a capital but - only a pure MIDI track has MIDI Sends. Instrument tracks lack this feature as their MIDI is always hardwired to go only to the associated instrument plugin and nowhere else.
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Again, many thanks, Johnny. You have a very well organized way to explain things!
That said, the difference between track vs rack seems to elude many users, not only me! I just watched several uTube videos trying to explain that, and… let’s just say that they don’t even agree with one another.
For example, one guy goes to great lengths to show us what racks can do by detailing procedures that I have been performing with Instruments tracks for years. Oh well.
The alternative source of infos would be The Nuendo manual, but it takes forever to open, search and navigate, so…
Maybe Steinberg will come up with a real comprehensive and flexible way to deal with these doubling issues? For the time being, good ol’ PatchWork is the best thing for me, with it’s open ended matrix and combined output, but I am sure that your mirror tracks idea will come in handy in some situations - for example if I wish to keep the sources separate even as rendered audio…
Best,
¥ ∆ ¥
Dominique Bassal
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